Law, J. M., Veispak, A., Vanderauwera, J. and Ghesquière, P. (2017) Morphological

awareness and visual processing of derivational morphology in high-functioning adults

with dyslexia: An avenue to compensation? Applied Psycholinguistics,

(doi:10.1017/S0142716417000467).

There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are

advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite from it.

http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/150581/

Deposited on: 25 October 2017

Enlighten – Research publications by members of the University of Glasgow

http://eprints.gla.ac.uk

Morphological awareness and visual processing of derivational morphology in high

functioning adults with dyslexia: An avenue to compensation?

Jeremy M Law*, Anneli Veispak, Jolijn Vanderauwera, & Pol Ghesquière

Parenting and Special Education Research Unit

KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.

Author Note

* Correspondence: J. M. Law, Parenting and Special Education Research Unit, KU

Leuven, Leopold Vanderkelenstraat 32, box 3765, 3000 Leuven, Belgium.

DrJeremyLaw@gmail.com

Abstract

This study examined the processing of derivational morphology and its

association with measures of morphological awareness and literacy outcomes in 30 Dutch

speaking high-functioning dyslexics, and 30 controls, matched for age and reading

comprehension. A masked priming experiment was conducted where the semantic

overlap between morphologically related pairs was manipulated as part of a lexical

decision task. Measures of morphological awareness were assessed using a specifically

designed sentence completion task. Significant priming effects were found in each group,

yet adults with dyslexia were found to benefit more from the morphological structure

than the controls. Adults with dyslexia were found to be influenced by both form

(morpho-orthographic) and meaning (morpho-semantic) properties of morphemes while

controls were mainly influenced by morpho-semantic properties. Results suggest that

morphological processing is intact in high-functioning dyslexics and a strength when

compared to controls matched for reading comprehension and age. Thus, supporting

morphological processing as a potential factor in the reading compensation of adults with

dyslexia. However, adults with dyslexia performed significantly worse than controls on

morphological awareness measures.

Keywords: dyslexia, morphological awareness, visual processing, compensation,

adults, priming

1. Introduction

Morphology is the study of word formation through the combination of

morphemes, the smallest linguistic units of meaning, to form more complex words. Since

the objective of writing is not to faithfully encode speech as we speak it, but rather to

transmit meaning as efficiently as possible, many writing systems have prioritised the

transparency of word roots over the regularity of speech sound, resulting in differences in

morphological complexity. An example of this can be seen in the written words ‘heal’ –

‘health’, or by how the various pronunciations of English plurals (i.e. dogs /'dɒgz/ and

cats /kæts/) are represented by a single ‘s’. The preservation of meaning over sound often

produces spelling irregularities in some languages, such as English. However, an increase

in morphological complexity has been shown to support reading. The increase of

morphological complexity allows individuals to utilise the morphemes of a target word as

units of processing through which meaning and associated phonological representations

may be extracted from the mental lexicon (Landerl & Reitsma, 2005; Levin, Ravid, &

Rapaport, 2001). Therefore, in cases where individuals are limited in their ability to

effectively create or access quality phoneme-grapheme correspondences, such as

individuals with dyslexia, an awareness of a language’s morphological structure may, in

part, offer a means of compensation for any observed literacy impairment (Burani,

Marcolini, De Luca, & Zoccolotti, 2008; Elbro & Arnbak, 1996; Law, Wouters, &

Ghesquière, 2015). To broaden our understanding of how individuals with dyslexia use

morphological structure and its potential role as a compensatory factor, this study

explored morphological awareness and morphological processing in typical and dyslexic

Dutch readers. Indexes of morphological complexity have placed Dutch as falling

between the more complex French language and English (Bane, 2008). Therefore, the

inclusion of a Dutch-speaking population provides a unique bridge through which to

discuss and compare past findings of French and English studies. This work will not

only broaden the current explanatory models of dyslexia but also aid in furthering the

characterization of compensatory factors in individuals with dyslexia.

1.1 Morphological awareness and reading

Morphological awareness (MA) is described as an individual’s “conscious (or

explicit) awareness of the morphemic structure of words and the ability to reflect on and

manipulate that structure” (Carlisle & Feldman, 1995, p. 194). Research has shown MA

begins developing prior to reading instruction, yet is often seen to be limited to an

awareness of inflectional forms in pre-reading children (Carlisle & Fleming, 2003; Berko

1958; Law, Wouters, & Ghesquière, 2016). Through increased print exposure and

instruction, a wider range of morphologically complex words are introduced to children;

which in turn stimulates and expands the individual's morphological awareness (Nagy

and Anderson, 1984).

Morphological awareness is thought to aid in the identification, comprehension,

and pronunciation of words through the analyses of the morphological structure of a

target word. Recent studies have demonstrated MA as a contributing factor in word

recognition, independent of orthographic processing, phonological awareness (PA), rapid

automatized naming, and vocabulary (Carlisle, 2000; Deacon & Kirby, 2004; Roman,

Kirby, Parrila, Wade-Woolley, & Deacon, 2009), and in reading comprehension, after

controlling for word reading, vocabulary, and PA (Carlisle, 2000; Deacon & Kirby, 2004;

Nagy, Berninger, & Abbott, 2006; Tong, Deacon, Kirby, Cain, & Parrila, 2011).

1.2 Morphological processing and reading

Morphological processing (MP) refers to the unconscious or implicit use of the

morphological structure of a target word during language processing. Although often

discussed as being related to MA, research demonstrating a relation between MP and MA

in adult readers is lacking.

Morphological processing is thought to contribute to initial word decoding and

increased reading speed of morphologically complex words through the decomposition of

a target word into its constituent morphemes, thus aiding in lexical access (Elbro 1989).

Additionally, this morphological deconstruction provides additional information to the

reader beyond form, such as syntactic, semantic and phonological information, that

further aids in word reading, reading comprehension and fluency achievement (Elbro

1989, Mahony, Singson, & Mann, 2000; Nagy et al., 2006).

Support for morphology’s role in early visual word recognition has been proved

through priming studies demonstrating, across various languages, derivational

morphological effects beyond the independent effects of semantics and orthography in

early visual word recognition, thus supporting a morphological structure within the

lexicon’s mental organization (Dutch: Diependaele, Sandra, & Grainger, 2009; English:

Marslen-Wilson, Bozic, & Randall, 2008; Rastle, Davis, & New, 2004; Italian: Burani et

al., 2008; and Spanish: Duñabeitia, Perea, & Carreiras, 2007). Furthermore, recent studies

have shown that the magnitude of morphological priming (i.e. reader –read) is greater

than the magnitude of pseudoderived priming ((i.e. corner-corn). These differences have

been attributed to the added benefit of the processing of morpho-semantic information

above that offered by the morpho-orthographic information. Thus, demonstrating

independent morpho-semantic and morpho-orthographic effects during early visual word

recognition (Diependaele, Sandra, & Grainger, 2005; Diependaele et al., 2011; Feldman

et al., 2009).

1.3 Dyslexia and morphology awareness and processing

Dyslexia is a hereditary neurological condition often characterised by accuracy

and/or fluency difficulties in decoding, word reading, and spelling (Vellutino, Fletcher,

Snowling, & Scanlon, 2004). Recent etiological views of dyslexia have suggested a

cognitive multi-deficit model to explain the behavioural traits of individuals with

dyslexia (Pennington, 2006). Pennington (2006) theorised that multiple genetic or

environmental factors act probabilistically as risk or protective factors. It is thought that

the probability of the development of the expressed behavioural symptoms is increased or

decreased through the interaction of these factors. One such risk factor that is considered

to be at the core of dyslexia, and found across all languages, is a deficit in the formation

of, and/or access to, phonological representations (Snowling, 2000, but see Ramus &

Szenkovits, 2008). Although heavily represented in the literature, phonological

impairments are not universal within the dyslexic population and, in turn, not all

individuals with phonological impairments develop the behavioural traits associated with

dyslexia (Snowling, 2008). However, attention has begun to shift from a single cause

model of dyslexia to one embodying multiple risk and protective factors, such as

morphological awareness and morphological processing.

Although underrepresented in the literature when compared to studies of

phonological skills of individuals with dyslexia, research examining morphological

awareness across various ages and languages have shown that dyslexics underperform

across a variety of measures assessing MA when compared with chronologically age-

matched controls (Berthiaume & Daigle, 2014; Casalis, Colé, & Sopo, 2004; Fowler,

Liberman, & Feldman, 1995; Martin, Frauenfelder, & Colé, 2014; Shankweiler et al.,

1995; Tsesmeli & Seymour, 2006). In studies employing a reading age match design,

however, dyslexics were shown to perform similarly to, or better than, younger reading

skill matched controls (Robertson, Joanisse, Desroches, & Terry, 2013; Tsesmeli &

Seymour, 2006; Martin, Frauenfelder, & Colé, 2014; Casalis, Colé, & Sopo, 2004), yet

Casalis, Colé, and Sopo, (2004) did find that children with dyslexia were found to be

poorer in morphological segmentation tasks when compared with reading-age controls.

Taken together these findings indicate that MA deficits are not causal to a

dyslexic’s reading struggles, thereby suggesting that MA deficits are a consequence of a

poor reading experience, or more primary deficits, such as the phonological deficit often

observed in individuals with dyslexia (Snowling 2000; Vellutino & Fletcher, 2005).

In contrast, research of MP has produced little evidence or agreement as to

whether or not the ability to rapidly process a word’s morphological structure is intact in

individuals with dyslexia (Elbro & Arnbak, 1996, Quémart & Casalis, 2015 but see

Deacon, Kirby & Parrila, 2006; Lazaro et al., 2013). Theoretically, it has been suggested

that a hierarchical structure of linguistic units is employed during early visual word

processing, in that the processing of smaller linguistic units (i.e., graphemes) are required

to process larger-size units such as rhymes (Duncan, Seymour, & Hill, 1997). Such a

situation would ultimately limit the visual processing of morphemes in a dyslexic

population, thus limiting MP. In support of this, a study by Deacon, Parrila, and Kirby

(2006) reported evidence suggesting a lack of sensitivity to the derivational structure of

written words by high functioning dyslexics. Through the use of a standard lexical

decision task, Deacon and colleagues reported that response times of the control group

varied between the derived and pseudo-derived test conditions with derived forms being

more quickly responded to by controls while similar effects were not found within the

high-functioning dyslexics.

However, based on the findings of Feldman, O’Connor & Martin (2009) the

results of Deacon Parrila, and Kirby (2006) could be interpreted as an indication of

differences in how morpho-orthographic and the morpho-semantic information is utilised

during visual word processing. Feldman and colleagues (2009) noted that reaction time

differences between derivations and pseudo derivations could be seen as a result of the

difference in morpho-semantic and morpho-orthographic processing during visual word

recognition. Therefore, the results of Deacon and colleagues (2006) could be interpreted,

not as a lack of sensitivity to the derivational structure, but as an indication that

individuals with dyslexia may utilise morpho-orthographic and morpho-semantic

information differently than controls.

Additional support of intact morphological processing skills of individuals with

dyslexia was reported by a recent masked priming study of French-speaking children,

which reported significant morphological priming effects in children with dyslexia

(Quémart and Casalis, 2013). Findings of Quémart and Casalis (2013) demonstrated a

sensitivity to morphological structure of individuals with dyslexia and some level of

morphological organisation of the lexicon. Furthermore, children with dyslexia

demonstrated greater prime effects for derived vs. pseudo-derived conditions, which was

not observed in controls, suggesting an earlier reliance on the morpho-semantic

properties of morphemes during early visual word recognition when compared with

controls. These results did differ from our interpretation of Deacon, et al.’s (2006)

findings that suggested a greater reliance on morpho-orthographic skills of adults with

dyslexia and not morpho-semantic skills. These differences may indicate the possible

influence of age and reading experience in the development of morphological processing

skill and strategy use of individuals with dyslexia.

1.4 Morphological awareness and morphological processing in compensation

It is theorised that when dealing with novel or less automatized words, dyslexics’

phonological impairment limits their reliance on the sublexical route that involves

decoding prior to lexical access. Thus, individuals with dyslexia are bound to utilize the

lexical route, which in a recent reconceptualization of the dual-route model of reading

(Grainger & Ziegler, 2011) has been argued to include not only direct lexical access, but

also indirect access through the aid of complex graphemes and morphemes (Deacon &

Tong, 2016).

Supporting this notion, Elbro and Arnbak (1996) found that when compared with

typical reading age-matched controls, Danish speaking dyslexic adolescents’ word

reading benefitted more from semantically transparent morphological structures than

from semantically opaque control-matched words; controls showed no such benefit.

Additionally, in an experiment where participants were presented with a text parsed into

morphemes rather than into syllables, Elbro and Arnbak noted that individuals with

dyslexia were found to benefit more from the morphological structure when compared to

the syllables. This benefit was not observed in the controls. Furthermore, Law et al.

(2015) examined cognitive differences in compensated and non-compensated adult

dyslexics based on age appropriate word reading achievement and found that of all the

cognitive measures assessed, only MA differed between the two groups. In addition, the

MA ability of the compensated dyslexics was found not to differ statistically from the

same aged reading-matched controls.

More recently, a French language study by Cavalli, Duncan, Elbro, El Ahmadi, &

Colé, (2016) involving university students with and without dyslexia demonstrated the

presence of intact morphological skills and their dissociation from the development of

phonological knowledge. Cavalli et al. (2016) revealed that the level of dissociation

between the quality morphological skills of an individual with dyslexia and their poor

phonological skills was highly predictive of reading skills of university students with

dyslexia, supporting the notion of morphological awareness and processing as a potential

avenue toward achieving compensation in reading.

1.5 The present study

This current study set out to address questions regarding the processing of

derivational morphology and morphological awareness and their association with literacy

outcomes in high-functioning dyslexic university students with a past diagnosis of

dyslexia, who have age appropriate reading comprehension skills. Deacon, Parrila and

Kirby (2006) noted that although such a population can achieve age appropriate reading

comprehension scores (specifically in untimed testing conditions), high functioning

dyslexics still demonstrate serious word level and reading rate difficulties in addition to

phonological processing difficulties.

Specifically, this paper will address the following questions:

1. Do high functioning adults with dyslexia activate morphological information in

the initial stages of visual word recognition?

2. Dohighfunctioningadultswithdyslexiadifferfromcontrolsintheuse

morphological information during visual word recognition?

3. Do high functioning adults with dyslexics differ from control in their

morphological awareness?

4. Can MP and MA be said to be related?

5. Do MP and MA contribute to reading outcomes similarly across both reading

groups?

Similar to the study of Quémart & Casalis, (2013) these questions will be addressed

through the implementation of a visual masked priming paradigm within a lexical

decision task that will utilise specifically designed word lists which allow for the

separation of morpho-semantic, morpho-orthographic, orthographic and semantic effects.

This testing paradigm has been recognised as a powerful tool to investigate rapid and

automatic word recognition, in addition to allowing for the examination of a process that

is not within explicit control (Forster & Veres, 1998; Quémart & Casalis, 2013; Rastle,

Davis, Marslen-Wilson, & Tyler, 2000).

This study will not only provide a replication of Quémart and Casalis (2013), but will

expand on this work through the introduction of an adult high functioning dyslexic

population. The examination of morphological skills and its association to literacy

outcomes in such a population will allow for greater understanding of how morphology is

used and processed by individuals with dyslexia and its population as a compensatory

factor. Furthermore, in comparison to past adult dyslexia studies such as Deacon et al.,

(2006), the method followed by this study will offer greater control of specific

orthographic, semantic, morpho-semantic and morpho-orthographic influences during

early visual word processing. Ultimately providing greater insight into how specifically

morphological information is used and aids in the reading process.

1.5.1 Hypotheses

We hypothesise that if the participants are able to process the morphological structure

of words during early visual word recognition, it could be expected that a significant

morphological priming effect in one or both of the morphological conditions (derived or

pseudo derived) is observable and to differ from orthographic and semantic controls. As

reasoned by Deacon, Parrila and Kirby (2006), if MP is to be considered as a path to

compensation in reading comprehension, despite phonological difficulties, we would then

expect a greater morphological priming effect within the dyslexic sample when compared

to controls. If a significant morphological priming effect is observed in the controls, but

not in dyslexics, then it would suggest that, similar to phonological processing,

morphological processing is an area of weakness.

If morphological facilitation is observed, then further investigation into the nature

of the observed morphological priming effect can be made (see Quémart & Casalis,

2013). Two assumptions could be made regarding the nature of a morphological priming

effect. First, as suggested by a form-driven hypothesis, a morpheme’s meaning is not

directly involved in morphological processing and, therefore, we would expect to observe

similar priming effects in both the morphological and pseudo-derivational conditions. If a

group of readers were to rely upon the semantic information contained within the

morphemes to process derivational morphology, then the meaning driven hypothesis

would predict significant priming effects in the morphological condition alone. As

semantic priming is often observed in the later stages of visual word recognition, we do

not expect to observe a significant priming effect in the semantic control condition

(Diependaele et al., 2005; Rastle, 2000; Bonnotte & Casalis, 2010). Based on the past

results discussed earlier, it would be expected to observe morphological facilitation in

early visual word recognition for both groups. As seen in Quémart & Casalis (2013) and

Elbro and Arnbak (1996) we expect individuals with dyslexia to differ from controls in

the pattern of morpho-orthographic and morpho-semantic prime effects. Based on the

adult study of Deacon et al. (2006) we would expect this difference to be reflected in the

greater reliance on morpho-orthographic information of adults with dyslexia.

We expect to find a relation between aspects of morpho-semantic priming effects

and performance on morphological tasks used in our study. It could be argued that the

MA tasks used here may rely more heavily upon the semantic and syntactic information

than upon the orthographic structure of the morphemes. Therefore, it should be expected

that observed morpho-semantic priming effects would be more likely to relate to our

measure of morphological awareness.

Lastly, for MP and MA to be considered a variable related to literacy

comprehension of adults with dyslexia, we expect that MA and MP do relate to reading

outcomes of individuals with dyslexia and based on the findings of Law et al. (2015) we

expect that this relationship will be greater within the dyslexic group than in controls.

2. Method

2.1 Participants

A total of 60 university students were recruited for this study, 30 (20 female and

10 male) typical reading control participants and 30 (23 female and 7 male) participants

with dyslexia. All participants were native Dutch-speaking university students at least 18

years of age. All participants reported no history of brain damage, language problems,

psychiatric symptoms, visual problems or hearing loss. The participants with dyslexia

were recruited through the University’s Student Services’ Special Needs office and

possessed an official diagnosis completed by a registered clinical psychologist in

secondary school or earlier. High functioning dyslexics were contrasted with a control

group which consisted of normal adult readers with no history of reading difficulty and

possessed similar levels of untimed reading comprehension as the high functioning

dyslexics (t(58) = -1.601; p = .115) as shown in Table 1. The adoption of such a control

group followed the rationale of Deacon, Parrila and Kirby (2006) to ensure an adequate

control group, where similarities in reading (in terms of text complexity) and word

experience were better matched than what would have been achieved through the use of a

younger word reading age-matched control group. The control population was assembled

through class announcements and the placement of posters throughout each campus.

Groups were found not to differ across age (t(58) = -1.298; p = .199) and intelligence as

(t(58) = -.938; p =.352) as measured by Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices. As

expected, the normal reading adult group (NR) was found to perform significantly better

than the dyslexic group (DYS) in both word reading, (t(58) = -10.563; p < .001), non-

word reading (t(58) = -9.102; p < .001) and spelling (t(58) = -6.697; p < .001) and

phonological awareness (measured with a spoonerism task) (t(58) = -7.560; p < .001).

Additionally, the control group outperformed the dyslexic group on the measure of

vocabulary (t(58) = -5.298; p < .001).

2.2 Background measures

To assess the background measures all participants completed a testing battery to

provide a better understanding of the cognitive and literacy skills of each group. All tests

were administered in a single session between the two experimental morphological

processing tasks. Table 1 reports descriptive statistics and t and p-values from

independent t-tests for each background measure.

Intelligence (IQ). Intelligence was measured by Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices

test (Raven & Court., 1998) which has a reported substantial test-retest reliability (r =

.83). This measure required the participants to make judgments related to presented

problems and to indicate their choice by pointing to the correct answer. The raw score

was calculated as the number correctly identified items for a maximum achievable score

of 60.

Reading comprehension was assessed through the use of the GL&SCHR subtest, an

original standardised Flemish dyslexia test battery for adults where split have reliability

was reported as r = .71 (De Pessemier & Andries, 2009). This task required the subjects

to read a present text silently and then answer questions about a text. For each of the 18

questions, a score of 0, 1 or 2 was awarded based on the correctness of the response as

outlined in the GL&SCHR manual.

Word reading was assessed through the use of the EMT or One Minute Test, which has

been found to be a reliable measure (r = .87), as determined through the utilisation of a

parallel test method (Brus & Voeten, 1999). This timed task required students to read

aloud as accurately and quickly as possible a list of 116 Dutch words of increasing

difficulty, printed in four columns. The participants were given one minute to read as

many words as possible. The raw score was calculated as the number of words read

correctly.

Pseudo-word reading. Pseudo-word reading was assessed with the Dutch test, De

Klepel (reported reliability of r = .91 was determined through the use of a parallel test

method) (Van den Bos, Spelberg, Scheepsma, & De Vries, 1994). Students were

instructed to read aloud as quickly and as accurately as possible a list containing 116

pseudo-words following the Dutch grapheme–phoneme correspondence rules. The raw

score was calculated as the number of pseudo-words read correctly to a maximum of 116

in 2 minutes.

Word spelling was assessed through a subtest from the GL&SCHR (De Pessemier &

Andries, 2009) which has been found to be a reliable measure for a university level

population (Cronbach alpha r = .76). Thirty Dutch exception words were read out loud at

a rate of one word per 2 seconds. Students were required to write down as many of the

words as they could. If needed, the subject was allowed to skip a word and to continue to

the next one. Once completed, missed words were repeated without time limits. A point

per correctly spelt word was awarded to a maximum of 30.

Phonological awareness. A spoonerism task, taken from the GL&SCHR (De Pessemier

& Andries, 2009), was used to assess the subject’s phonological awareness. Test re-test

reliability was determined at r = .90. For this task two words at a time were presented

orally. The subject was required to exchange the first letters of the given words (e.g.

Harry Potter will become Parry Hotter). In addition, a reversal task was performed.

Participants were to judge if two spoken words were reversals or not, e.g. rac-car. Both

time and accuracy were taken into account. A point per correct response was awarded to

a maximum of 20.

Vocabulary was assessed by a subtest of the GL&SCHR (De Pessemier & Andries,

2009). Reliability was determined for a university level population through a Cronbach

alpha: r = .90. Participants were asked to orally give definitions of low-frequency words

in the Dutch language; such as the Dutch equivalents of anonymous or simultaneous. A

point per correctly defined word was awarded to a maximum of 25.

Morphological awareness was assessed through an adapted version of the morphological

awareness task created Wilson-Fowler (2011). Wilson-Fowler revealed a unidimensional

factor structure of morphological awareness and generated a validated, exogenous

measure of MA in university students based on two assessment approaches: a

derivational suffixes task and non-word sentence completion task. For the purposes of

this study, this task was adapted for a Dutch-speaking population.

Derivational suffix task. The derivational suffix task (DST) was based on tasks

created by Carlisle (2000). The task required participants to complete 25 visually

presented sentence by applying a derivational suffix to a target root word (Dutch

example: West. De aanwijzer stuurt ons in westelijke richting. / English equivalent:

Act. The secret police arrested the ___ before he could give his speech). The frequency of

the stem for each item varied from 0 to 735 words per million (M1 = 91,21;

SD1 = 174.64), the frequency of the derived words ranged from 0 to 24 per million

(M2 = 5.88; SD2 = 7.14). Of the twenty-five items, 14 were nouns, and 11 were

adjectives. The task included items with various combinations of orthographic, semantic

or phonological shifts. Instructions, along with four examples, were presented verbally

and in writing. The task items are thought to offer a measure of syntactic morphological

awareness. Participants could achieve a maximum total score of 25.

Non-word sentence completion task. The non-word sentence completion task

(NWSC) was based on Mahony (1994). Participants were instructed to read and complete

27 incomplete sentences. Responses were selected from a list of four possible non-word

choices that varied according to the suffix (Dutch example: Fijn dat hij kon rekenen op

hun ____ [gruinlijk/gruinig/gruiner/gruinheid]. / An English equivalent: They presented

the highly ____ evidence first [credenthive, credenthification, credenthicism,

credenthify]). All non-words were composed of a nonsense root or base word combined

with a real Dutch suffix. The target words were equally divided between nonsense nouns,

adjectives and verb derivatives. Instructions and one example were presented verbally

and in writing. Responses were scored as correct or incorrect to a maximum achievable

score of 25.

Cronbach’s alpha was calculated to assess the internal consistency of the

construct of morphological awareness by first submitting all item responses of both MA

measures. The analysis resulted in the removal of 10 of the 50 questions. Two questions

were removed due to zero variance found, while eight others were removed to strengthen

internal consistency. The remaining 40 questions had a high level of internal consistency,

as determined by a Cronbach's alpha of 0.75; which exceeds the recommended value of

0.7 or greater (DeVillis, 2003; Kline, 2005). The final composite score of MA was

produced through the summation of the remaining 40 questions (20 from each subtest)

and standardised.

2.3 Morphological processing

Stimuli and design

The design of the experiment allowed for the manipulation of orthographic,

morphological, and semantic links between prime-target pairs across four experimental

conditions. The conditions were the following:

(1) morphological (+M+S+O) (e.g. angstig–ANGST). Prime-targets are

morphologically related and morphologically decomposable (+M). The target was

orthographically represented within the prime (+O) as well as being semantically related

to the prime (+S). An English equivalent would be jumper – JUMP.

(2) Pseudo-Derivation (+M-S+O) (e.g. heerlijk – HEER). In this condition,

primes are considered as pseudo-derivations, as the primes and targets are not actually

morphologically related as they share no semantic overlap (-S), but they can be

segmented into an apparent stem and productive derivational affix (+M). Like for

instance the English example of corner-CORN. The pseudo-derivation prime corner can

be segmented into a stem of corn and the derivational affix –er, yet the word pair of

corner-CORN are without semantic overlap.

(3) Semantic control (-M+S-O) ( e.g. schip-BOOT) where the target and prime

were only semantically related (+S) and the prime was not morphologically

decomposable (-M). An English equivalent would be hound - DOG.

(4) orthographic control (-M-S+O) (e.g. banket-BANK). In this condition, targets

were orthographically related to the primes in that the initial part of the prime contained

the target but could not be parsed into existing Dutch morphemes (i.e., –et is not a suffix

in Dutch). For instance, an English example would be scandal-SCAN, where the target

scan can be observed within scandal yet the final syllable dal of the prime can not be

considered a possible derivational affix in Dutch, thus making it not morphologically

decomposable.

Each of the four experimental conditions contained 24 prime-target pairs, creating

a total of 96 experimental pairs. All targets were free morphemes. Morphological status

of the primes was determined using the CELEX Dutch lexical database (Baayen et al.

1995). As in Marslen-Wilson et al. (2008), word pairs were considered morphologically

decomposable (+M) when the derived form had a recognisable Dutch suffix which was

attached to a potential stem, thus making them morpho-graphically related (or potentially

related) as seen in conditions 1 and 2. Semantic relatedness shared between prime-target

word pairs, and unrelated filler pairs were evaluated by 25 native Dutch-speaking

graduate students from the Linguistics and Educational Sciences departments of the

University of Leuven (KU Leuven) in Belgium. Semantic relatedness was rated on a 5-

point scale from 1 (definitely not related) to 5 (definitely related). Prime-target pairs for

the semantically related condition (+M+S+O and –M+S+O) were selected when word

pairs received an average rating of 4 or greater, while pairs for the semantically unrelated

condition (+M-S+O and –M-S+O) were chosen when they received an average score of 2

or less.

Targets and primes were matched across the 4 conditions for lemma and word

frequency, length, neighborhood size, syllable count, family size and family frequency

(ps > .100). Primes were matched across all four test conditions for word frequency,

lemma frequency and syllable length (ps > .085) but could not be perfectly matched for

length, F(3, 110) = 7.020, p < .001, as the sematic control primes were shorter (mean

letters = 5.8) than the morphological (mean letters = 7.2); pseudo-derivation (mean

letters = 6.9); orthographic control (mean letters = 6.9) conditions. Additionally primes

were unable to be matched perfectly for neighborhood size (N), F(3, 110) = 7.452,

p < .001. Primes from the semantic control (mean N size = 4.55) condition had more

orthographic neighbors than primes in the morphological (mean N size = 1.32), the

pseudo-derivation (mean N size = 2.06) and orthographic control (mean N size = 1.51)

conditions. Average values for each of these attributes across all conditions are displayed

in Table 2.

Similar to the procedure of Marslen-Wilson et al. (2008) each of the 96 targets

were associated with an unrelated prime by pseudo-randomizing the primes around the

targets. Unrelated control prime target pairs were checked to ensure they shared no

morphological, semantic or orthographic relationship. These control prime target pairs

provided a baseline allowing for the assessment of priming effects.

To reduce the proportion of related prime-target pairs, an additional set of 24

unrelated prime target pairs were included as fillers in the experiment, generating a total

of 192 prime target pairs.

Furthermore, 192 word/non-word pairs were created. Primes consisted of real

Dutch words while the non-word targets were orthographically and phonologically

plausible sequences in the Dutch language (e.g. gump, cheme). Similar to Quémart and

Casalis (2013), 84 non-word targets were preceded by an orthographically related word

while the remaining 108 non-words were preceded by an orthographically unrelated

word. Half of the primes of the word/non-word pairs were derived or pseudo-derived

words.

Following the procedure of Quémart and Casalis (2013), the 384 items or prime-

target pairs were divided into two presentation lists of 192 items, each list containing 96-

word targets and 96 non-word targets. All the targets appeared once in each list. In list 1

half of the 96-word targets were associated with a control prime (12-word targets from

each of the four conditions) while the other half was associated with an unrelated prime

(the remaining 12-word targets from each of the four conditions). Where in list 1 a target

word was preceded by an unrelated prime, it was then preceded by a related prime in

list 2.

2.3.1 Procedure

Both control and dyslexic subjects were randomly divided into two equal groups

where one group was presented list order 1-2 the stimuli were presented to the second

group through a list order of 2-1. As each participant completed both experimental lists,

an attempt to minimize repetition effect was made by completing the cognitive and

literacy tasks described earlier in this paper between the presentations of the two

experimental lists. Furthermore, to ensure that the repeated target presentation did not

influence priming effects, presentation of the list order (1-2 or 2-1) was entered into the

statistical analysis.

Stimuli presentation along with the recording of reaction times and accuracies

were controlled for by the PsychoPy version 1.8 software package (Peirce, 2009) running

on a Dell Latitude D630 laptop computer. In a random order, each item was displayed in

black Times New Roman 42 type on a white background. Each trial began with a

1000 ms fixation cross (+) center on the screen which was then proceeded by a forward

mask (######) displayed for 500 ms. The prime was displayed in lowercase letters for an

SOA of 72 ms (Marslen-Wilson et al., 2008; Rastle, 2010). Immediately following, the

target word was presented in upper case letters. The target remained on the screen for

5000ms or until the participant responded. Participants were instructed to respond as

accurately and as quickly as possible by pressing a designated button on a keyboard to

indicate if a letter string was a real word or not. Reaction times were measured from the

onset of target presentation until the participant’s response. Participants were given 10

practice trials at the beginning of each trail.

To isolate morpho-semantic effect apart from the influence of morpho-

orthographic information during the processing of derived forms (as in the morphological

condition). Individual priming effects of the pseudo derivational condition were

subtracted from the morphological prime condition (+M+S+O) isolating any prime

advantage that could be attributed to the processing of morpho-semantic information

while controlling for the use of morpho-orthographic information. Thus, resulting in the

new variable: morpho-semantic advantage (MS).

3. Results

3.1 Morphological processing

Overall mean rates of correct items for each participant within each experimental

condition were calculated. Mean error and mean reaction times (RTs) to correctly

responded items in each condition by participant group are presented in Table 3. Data

cleaning involved the removal of response times faster than 300 ms or slower than

3000 ms, in addition to outliers that were defined as response times more than 2.5

standard deviations from the mean response time for any given individual in each

condition. Priming effects for each condition were calculated as the difference between

reaction times of primed and unprimed presentation within each condition (see Table 3).

Analysis within each group involved a 4 (condition: Morphological, Pseudo-derivation,

Semantic Control, Orthographic Control) X 2 (priming: Related vs. Unrelated) X 2 (order

of list presentation: 1 vs. 2) repeated measure ANOVA where reaction times (RTs) acted

as the dependent variable. Similar to Deacon et al. (2006) as well as Quémart and Casalis

(2013) only significance in the analysis by subjects and not by item was relied upon to

reject the null hypothesis. Raaijmakers, Schrijnemakers, and Gremmen (1999) asserted

that in experiments employing highly selected and balanced items, as was the case within

this study, the null hypotheses may be rejected based solely on a found significance in the

analyses by subjects.

3.1.1 Do high functioning adults with dyslexia activate morphological information

within the initial stages of visual word recognition?

A main effect of list order was not found, F(1, 28) = .134, p = .717, therefore will

not be further discussed. Analysis indicated a significant main effect of condition, F(3,

84) = 6.728, p < .001. A main effect of priming was found to be significant,

F(1, 28) = 6.688, p = .015, demonstrating faster reaction times for related prime-target

pairs than for the unrelated ones. A significant two-way interaction between priming and

condition F(3,84) = 5.285, p = .002, indicating that the amount of priming differed across

the four conditions. Post hoc analysis of the found 2 way interaction revealed that the

high functioning dyslexic group showed a significant priming effect in both the

morphological, F(1, 28) = 14.740, p = .001 (prime effect of 88ms), and pseudo-derivation

conditions, F(1, 28) = 4.697, p = .039 (prime effect of 49 ms) while not in the

orthographic and semantic control conditions [F(1, 28) = 2.259, p = .144; F(1,

28) = 1.462, p = .237]. Differences between the prime effect of the morphological and

pseudo-derivation condition were found to approach significance, F(1, 28) = 3.765,

p = .06

3.1.2 Do high functioning adults with dyslexia differ from controls in the use

morphological information during visual word recognition?

The control group contrasted with the dyslexics sample as only a significant

priming effect in the morphological condition was found F(1, 28) = 17.999, p < .001,

(prime effect of 31 ms) but not in any of the other three condition, pseudo-derivation:

F(1, 28) = .567, p = .458; orthographic control: F(1, 28) = 2.049, p = .163 and semantic

control: F(1, 28) = .015, p = .903.

Following the rationale of Deacon et al. (2006) for morphological processing to

be considered as a potential compensational path in reading comprehension (as suggested

by Elbro & Arnbak, 1996), the morphological priming effects should be expectedly

greater for dyslexics than for the controls. An examination across both groups of the

priming effects of both derived (morphological condition) and pseudo-derivation

conditions revealed a significant difference where dyslexics were found to benefit more

from the morphological structure of the prime in both conditions when compared to

controls with similar reading comprehension levels (morphological condition: (t(49.9) = -

6.732; p < .001); pseudo derived condition: (t(49.9) = -6.732; p < .001).

3.2 Do high functioning adults with dyslexics differ from control in their

morphological awareness.

Adults with dyslexia were found to significantly underperform controls on our

MA measure, as seen in Table 1. These results were found to support past research of

MA of children and adults with dyslexia. As MA is often found to be closely associated

with vocabulary and phonological awareness an ANCOVA was run to determine the

effect of group differences concerning normal and dyslexic readers on morphological

awareness while controlling for vocabulary and phonological awareness. After

adjustment for vocabulary knowledge and PA (as measured by the spoonerism task) the

initially observed poorer performance of readers with dyslexia was maintained,

F(1, 56) = 12.170, p = .001, partial η2 = .179.

3.3 Do performances on MP, and MA tasks share any commonality?

To examine the relationship between performance on MA and MP tasks Pearson

correlations were conducted between the morphological priming effect and the composite

score of morphological awareness within each group. Results demonstrated that

morphological awareness differed between groups in its relationships with measures of

MP. MA’s relationship with the new variable of morpho-semantic advantage was found

to significantly differ between groups (p = 0.024), for MA and ms where were only found

to be significantly related within the high-functioning dyslexic participants (r = .513;

p = .004). MA was not related to any other measure of morphological priming effect

within the control population or dyslexics (ps >.060).

3.4 Does MP and MA contribute to reading outcomes similarly across both

reading groups?

To examine the relationship between morphological awareness and morphological

processing with the performance on the assessed literacy background measures Pearson

correlations were conducted within each group (see Table 4). Different patterns of

significant relations of MA and MP and literacy measures were observed across the two

groups. Within the control group the composite score of MA was found to be

significantly related to spelling (r = .487, p = .006) in addition to reading comprehension

significantly relating to ms (r = .410, p = .025). Yet, within the dyslexic group spelling

was found to be significantly related to both the ms (r = .548, p = .002) and morpho-

orthographic priming effect (as measured through the pseudo-derivation condition)

(r = .461, p = .010), while a trend toward a significant relationship between spelling and

MA was observed (r = .355, p = .054). Additionally, word reading and non-word reading

were found to be significantly related to ms (r = .433, p = .017; and r = .466, p = .009).

Further analysis comparing the differenced of these relations between groups found ms’s

relation with spelling to significantly differ between dyslexics and controls (Z = 1.8, p =

0.036), while group differences between the relation of word reading and nonword

reading with ms were found to be approaching significance (Z = 1.48, p = 0.069; Z =

1.49, p = 0.068).

Due to the found group differences on the measure of vocabulary (t(58) = -5.298;

p < .001) additional analyses at all levels were conducted controlling for this difference.

All patterns of significance reported above were maintained when controlled for

vocabulary, with the addition of the finding of a significant correlation of spelling and

MA within the high-functioning dyslexic group (r = .368, p = 0.049).

4. Discussion

The current study set out to address questions regarding the processing of

morphologically derived forms and its association with measures of morphological

awareness and literacy outcomes in high-functioning dyslexics, defined as university

students with a past diagnosis of dyslexia with age appropriate reading comprehension

skills. Similar to Deacon et al. (2006) the high-functioning dyslexics were compared to a

control group of age-matched peers with similar reading comprehension ability.

The background variables of the dyslexic group were found to be consistent with

much of the literature, as they were found to perform significantly poorer on measures of

phonological processing, spelling, as well as word and non-word reading when compared

to a normal reading population (Deacon et al., 2006; Vellutino et al., 2004).

A masked priming experiment was conducted to examine morphological

facilitation during early visual word recognition as well as the effects produced by the

shared semantic (meaning) and orthographic (form) overlap between morphologically

related primes (conditions 1 and 2). Ultimately, we were aiming to determine if high

functioning adults with dyslexia implicitly use morphological information within the

initial stages of visual word recognition and whether they differed from controls in how

morpho-semantic and morpho-orthographic information influenced this facilitation

during visual word recognition.

Results demonstrate significant morphological priming effects for the dyslexic

readers in both the morphological and pseudo-derived conditions. These findings differed

from the controls who were only found to have a significant morphological priming

effect at our prime duration of 72 ms, fitting with the results of Rastle and colleagues

(2000). Significant priming effects were not found in the orthographic and semantic

control conditions in either group. These patterns of priming suggest that high-

functioning dyslexics indeed benefit from morphological facilitation during early visual

word recognition and this effect can be distinguished from priming attributed to general

orthographic and semantic overlap alone. These results support the hypothesis first put

forth by Elbro and Arnbak (1996) and builds on previous research (Burani et al., 2008;

Quémart & Casalis, 2013), which suggested that irrespective of their decoding deficits,

dyslexics can process morphemic units rapidly and automatically.

As reasoned earlier, for morphological processing to be considered as a potential

path to compensation (as suggested by Elbro & Arnbak, 1996), it should be expected that

morphological priming effects would be greater for dyslexics than for the controls. A

significant difference of priming effect of morphological facilitation between the two

groups was observed. Dyslexics were shown to benefit more from the morphological

structure of the prime compared to controls with similar reading comprehension levels.

These results support the notion that morphological processing is not only intact in high-

functioning dyslexics but also a strength compared to age and reading comprehension

matched controls. Morphological processing, therefore, may well be an avenue to achieve

compensation within reading comprehension for individuals with dyslexia. Leikin and

Zur Hagit (2006) as well as Burani et al. (2008) theorized that due to dyslexic readers’

poor decoding abilities and often slow and less automated whole word processing,

individuals with dyslexia must rely on morphological decomposition to aid lexical access,

as was depicted in the previously discussed re-conceptualized dual route model of

reading (Grainger & Ziegler, 2011). Linkin and Zur Hagit (2006) went on to propose that

to overcome their poor decoding skills; dyslexic readers develop an increased

morphological sensitivity. The results of this study support this theory.

Secondly, our experimental design allows for the determination of whether or not

the overlap in form and meaning between morphologically related words is required for

high-functioning dyslexic readers to benefit fully from morphological facilitation during

visual word recognition. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine differential

effects of morpho-semantic and morpho-orthographic processing in a masked priming

paradigm within a population of adults with dyslexia.

Similarly to the study of Feldman et al. (2009), the priming effect found for the

morphological condition was observed to be larger than the effect within the pseudo-

derivation condition (although was only found to be approaching significance).

Diependaele et al. (2009) discussed these differences as a feature of the hybrid model of

morphological processing. This model predicts that both morpho-semantic and morpho-

orthographic properties are activated in parallel when a reader is presented with a

morphologically complex word. The parallel activation, in turn, generates a feedback

connection through the interaction of the morpho-semantic and morpho-orthographic

routes, resulting in a noticeable increased priming effect. This differs from the slower

pseudo-derivation conditions that were reliant on a single activation at the morpho-

orthographic level.

Past research in dyslexic children by Quémart and Casalis (2013), found that at

60 ms of visual prime presentation dyslexic children differed from controls in the use of

both morpho-semantic (meaning) and morpho-orthographic (form) properties of

morphemes to benefit from morphological facilitation during visual word recognition this

early time point. Although at a longer 72 ms prime presentation, the results of this study

do support previous findings of differences between dyslexics and controls in the use of

morphological information. Our results did differ from the pattern of findings reported by

Quémart and Casalis (2013) as dyslexics were found to make use of both morpho-

orthographic and morpho-semantic information while the processing of morpho-

orthographic information did not offer any measurable advantage for controls.

As our study differed from that of Quémart and Casalis (2013) in two key areas,

prime duration and participant age, two possible arguments could be made to explain the

differences in these patterns of results. Firstly it could be argued that with the increase of

age dyslexic individuals may increase their flexibility to process morpho-orthographic

properties alongside morpho-semantic processing. A more likely explanation could be

attributed to the natural evolution of various forms of facilitation during early word visual

recognition, as those noted by past time-course studies, such as Rastle and colleague

(2000). Therefore the observed difference in the influence of morpho-semantic and

morpho-orthographic information between our findings and those reported by Quémart

and Casalis may be evidence of an alternative time-course of facilitation within

individuals with dyslexia when compared with controls. Future time-course studies

utilising a range of SOA will need to be conducted within individuals with dyslexia to

help further address these questions.

4.1 Morphological awareness in high-functioning adults with dyslexia

To date, we are unaware of any study to examine the role of MA in Dutch-speaking

adults with dyslexia. Our study found that adults with dyslexia performed worse on

measures of MA when compared with age-matched controls. Similar results have been

found across various languages in adults (Nagy et al., 2006; Law et al., 2015; Leikin and

Zur Hagit, 2006) and children (Carlisle & Feldman, 1995; Deacon & Kirby, 2004; Nagy

et al., 2006). Our results are in agreement with these past findings, which conclude that

individuals with dyslexia have a deficit in MA relative to typical readers of the same age.

Yet, previous studies have also demonstrated that individuals with dyslexia perform as

well as or better than younger, reading age-matched controls on MA tasks, which

suggests that the MA deficit observed in dyslexics is not causal of their word reading

deficit and is potentially a consequence of their poor reading experience or poor

phonological awareness skills (Cavalli et al., 2016; Martin, Frauenfelder, & Colé, 2014;

Tsesmeli & Seymour, 2006; Robertson et al., 2013).

4.2 Relations between MA, MP and literacy

To examine whether the relationships between measures of morphological and

literacy achievement were different in the two groups, with dyslexia vs. controls,

correlations were calculated separately within each group. Our results found that only

morpho-semantic advantage was related to MA within the dyslexic group. That lack of a

significant relationship between morpho-orthographic properties and MA may have been

a function of the MA test design. The two MA tests employed in the study both relied

less on form and more heavily on the semantic and syntactic information of the target

morphemes. For instance in the Non-word sentence completion task students had to judge

which of the provided non-words (all containing plausible Dutch affixes) completed the

sentence. To execute this task subjects had to rely specifically on the syntactic and

semantic information conveyed by the affix only.

MS’s pattern of significant relations with literacy measures also differed between

groups. Morpho-semantic priming effects were found to be strongly related to spelling,

word and non-word reading in the dyslexic group while only relating to reading

comprehension in controls. Although morpho-orthographic information were found to

facilitate increased morphological decomposition within the dyslexic subjects (as

evidenced by the significant prime effect found for the pseudo-derived condition), the

results of our correlational analysis support the argument of Elbro and Arnbak’s (1996)

which states that individuals with dyslexia may rely more on the morpho-semantic

properties of morphemes to aid their performance during time sensitive literacy measures

(as in the word and non-word reading tasks administered in this study).

Spelling’s relationship with morphological awareness and within both groups was

expected. Similarly across various languages, Caravolas (2004) points out that spelling is

not only based on phoneme-grapheme correspondence but also on morphemes and other

orthographic patterns that may not be directly predicted at the phoneme level.

Although considered to be a relatively transparent language, Dutch does contain

numerous cases of words that are not spelt using phonological but rather morphological

principles (see Rispoli et al., 2004). Therefore, it can be expected that spelling is

facilitated by morphology as morphemes are often considered to be more consistent and

transparent with respect to the morphological structure of words (Caravolas, 2004).

4.3 Limitations and future perspectives

The reliance of a single SOA (72 ms) during the priming task could be seen as a

limitation of this study. Studies that have examined morphological facilitation over a

time-course of varying SOAs demonstrated that the scale of visible morphological

priming effects changes as a function of SOA (Marslen-Wilson et al., 2008; Rastle,

2000). Rastle (2000) found that in normal reading adults the priming effect for pseudo-

derivation conditions was larger and significant at shorter SOAs of 43ms than compared

to an SOA of 72 ms where significance was not found. The examination of prime-target

pairs at different SOAs may have yielded a different pattern of results. The general slow

speed of information processing associated with individuals with dyslexia (Bowers &

Wolf, 1993; Breznitz & Misra, 2003) may have skewed what would have been

considered a normal pattern of results at an SOA of 43ms to a longer SOA of 72 ms.

Future research would need to conduct a time course study of varying SOAs to examine

if the observed pattern of results is unique to an SOA of 72 ms or if dyslexics consistently

differ over time in how morphological facilitation aids early visual word recognition.

Additionally, the limitation posed by the MA tasks reliance on semantic and

syntactic information also may have obscured the observation of potential relationships

between morpho-orthographic priming effects and many of the literacy tasks. As this

study has demonstrated that differential effects of the various levels of information

contained within a morpheme are observable, future studies should take care in the

selection and design of MA measures. Although Law et al., 2015 did demonstrate intact

morphological awareness skills of compensated adults with dyslexia through the use of

the same MA testing design, it should be noted that the visual presentation of the MA

tasks represents a limit of the study since the dyslexic group had reading difficulties.

Future MA task design should focus on oral presentation and the balanced use of the

syntactic, semantic, orthographic and phonological properties and information of

morphemes within the tasks.

Lastly, to better understand morphology’s role as an avenue to compensation,

future studies should attempt to examine not only compensated or high-functioning

dyslexics, but also non-compensated dyslexics.

5. Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the help and support of Christine Swennen, Dr.

Ditte Kimps and Dr. Natalia Pericchi Pagá in the design and balancing of the measures.

This research has been financed by the research fund of the KU Leuven

(grants dBOF/12/014 and OT/12/044).

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Tables 1-4 for: Morphological awareness and visual processing of derivational

morphology in high functioning adults with dyslexia: An avenue to compensation?

Table 1: Participant characteristics and performance on background literacy and phonological processing measures NR DYS Measures M SD M SD t p Non-verbal IQ 26.30 5.15 27.59 5.70 -0.938 .352 Word Reading 102.03 11.25 70.93 11.37 -10.563 <.001* Spelling 25.47 2.69 19.53 4.04 -6.697 <.001* Reading comprehension 22.07 4.48 20.27 4.23 -1.800 .115 Pseudo word reading 102.79 12.61 68.30 16.21 -9.102 <.001* Vocabulary 13.03 3.34 8.77 2.89 -5.298 <.001* Spoonerism 64.50 31.30 17.37 13.65 -7.560 <.001* Morphological awareness (z-score) 0.00 1.00 -2.25 1.53 -6.732 <.001* Notes. * significance maintained after adjusting for multiple comparisons.

Table 2. Mean values for item attributes across testing condition

Lemma frequency Word

frequency Length N size Syllable count Family size Family

frequency Condition Prime Target Prime Target Prime Target Prime Target Prime Target Target Target Morphological (M+S+O+)

16.8 111.7 12.4 30.7 7.2 4.3 1.3 9.9 2.2 1.1 52.4 6481.1

Pseudoderivation (+M-S+O)

55.1 104.1 44.14 97.0 6.9 4.2 2.1 11.3 2.1 1.1 70.5 7757.6

Sematic control (-M+S-O)

79.7 121.7 57.7 68.0 5.8 4.2 4.6 9.7 1.6 1.1 79.4 4545.3

Orthographic control (-M-S+O)

25.4 103.3 10.1 49.5 6.9 4.0 1.5 13.0 2.2 1.0 52.24 9041.2

Note: N size corresponds to the mean number of orthographic neighbors (neighborhood size)

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Table 3. Mean (standard deviation) RTs (ms) and error percentages for control and dyslexic 1 groups according to the condition and priming relationship. 2

Control DYS RT Error% RT Error %

Morphological (M+S+O+) Related 619 (78) 2.1 (3.2) 772 (107) 3.5 (3.9) Unrelated 650 (72) 1.5(2.3) 860 (179) 3.7 (3.7) Priming effect (ms) 31** 88**

Pseudo-derivation (M+S-O+) Related 643(77) 1.8 (3.6) 791 (130) 2.8 (2.8) Unrelated 650(69) 2.3 (2.6) 840 (146) 3.2 (3.7) Priming effect (ms) 7 49*

Semantic Control (M-S+O-) Related 623 (63) 0.3 (1.1) 769 (124) 1.1 (1.9) Unrelated 636 (62) 4.2 (1.6) 796 (137) 1.5 (2.5) Priming effect (ms) 13 27

Orthographic Control (M-S-O+) Related 651 (76) 1.0 (2.8) 809 (136) 1.3 (2.3) Unrelated 649 (71) 0.8 (2.0) 834 (158) 1.8 (3.0) Priming effect (ms) 2 25 Note: RTs, reaction times; +/-M, Morphologically decomposable/not decomposable; +/-S, Semantically highly related/unrelated; +/-O: Orthographic overlap high/low. * p < .05, ** p < .001 3 4 Table 4: Pearson correlations between measures of literacy and morphological knowledge within 5 each group . Upper right -control participants; lower left - Dyslexic 6 Measure 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1. MA -- .028 .085 .487** .131 .077 .100 2.MS .513** -- .458* .126 .062 .098 .410* 3. MO .225 .366* -- .139 .232 .003 .121 4. Spelling .355^ .548** .461* -- .319 .382* .275 5. Word_Read .037 .433* .161 .178 -- .526** .161 6. NonWord .130 .466** .057 .502** .666*** -- .129 7. Read_Comp .309 .134 .071 .356 .186 .285 -- Note. MA: Morphological awareness; ms: morpho-semantic advantage; MO: morpho-orthographic; Word_Read: word reading from the one minute word reading test; NonWord: non word reading task; Read_Comp: reading comprehension ^p < .06. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. 7 8

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